In warehouses and other storage facilities, large stores, and factories, there are often specified areas for filling boxes, carts, containers, palettes, or other totes for carrying various goods. One example is a “picking area,” in which goods received by the facility are sorted into or onto totes for delivery to another area. These totes are conveyed to a second area, often by an automated system of conveyors, and at the second area unloaded so that the goods may be further processed. For instance, the second area may be a consolidation area, where goods are removed from the tote and consolidated with goods of the same type for storage, use, or display. In such systems, the empty totes are stacked and then manually carried or driven by forklift back to their point of origin. If there are multiple picking areas, one picking area may experience a shortage of empty totes, and workers in that area may request that excess totes be manually gathered from a different picking area. There are no known systems in place for automatically distributing empty totes to one or more filling or picking areas on an as-needed basis so that a baseline number of empty totes is maintained.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,715,660 describes a station with two adjacent vertical conveyors, one for supplying empty containers to the station, and one for removing and unloading filled containers. The device may include sensing circuitry to determine when a container located at the station is full, but the system simply removes full containers and replaces them with empty containers without determining whether to direct empty containers to a different destination when the station is occupied. U.S. Patent Application 2015/0125249 describes a vertical stacking device for stacking empty containers from a plurality of empty container stations, but the disclosed system only sends empty containers to a single destination to be stacked and then removed as a stack. There remains a need for an automated system to efficiently manage and distribute empty totes as needed at one or more points within the system.
Elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and/or relative positioning of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present invention. Certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required. The terms and expressions used herein have the ordinary technical meaning as is accorded to such terms and expressions by persons skilled in the technical field as set forth above except where different specific meanings have otherwise been set forth herein.